Edutopia News: Common Core Series of 5 Blog Posts
This is five-part series which takes a look at five big ideas for implementation of the Common Core State Standards, authored by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins:
Common Core Big Idea 5: Consider Meaningful Assessment;
Common Core Big Idea 4: Map Backward From Intended Results;
Common Core Big Idea 3: Standards Must Be Unpacked;
Common Core Big Idea 2: The Standards Are Not Curriculum;
Common Core Big Idea 1: A New Blueprint.
Goals are clearly stated and nicely met. The goal of this series is to clear up misunderstandings and offer recommendations for designing a coherent curriculum and assessment system for realizing the standards’ promise. The standards, methods, plausibility, accuracy and value are all well above average in this series. The authors are not afraid either of having a few criticisms of the CCSS, which further increases their own credibility.The analogies, such as the standards role in learning compared to the process for building a home, communicate effectively to any reader and nicely support the contents. The short length, broken up into five pieces, also makes for easy understanding. These resources should be highly useful to educators and professional development creators. The suggestions that are dropped in throughout the articles, are enticing, such as: Thus, the first question for curriculum writers is not: What will we teach and when should we teach it? Rather the initial question for curriculum development must be goal focused: Having learned key content, what will students be able to do with it? It is difficult to predict the impact of any resource, but given the well known expertise of the authors, combined with their very practical recommendations, the impact and generalizability should be very high.